Earlier this week, I spent most of a day traveling through the county with Adlia Strickland, our Robeson County Forest Ranger.

Adlia was showing me examples of how he and his staff assist local property owners to implement forestry practices or to help them deal with timber-related issues on their property.

He and I have begun to plan some forestry educational meetings for the winter, so we were also looking for good “show-and-tell” sites for tours and fields days.

It was really interesting to hear Adlia describe the various government cost-share programs that are available and then to have him show me actual examples of how those programs are benefiting landowners. Many of these programs are funded as part of the farm bill and are designed to address major environmental or ecological issues.

Some of these programs attempt to get more land into timber production in order to reduce carbon emissions, provide timber for the future, or use our lands more efficiently; some attempt to re-establish species of trees on the decline such as longleaf pine; some are designed to provide habitat and nesting sites for wildlife; and some are designed to protect wetlands, conserve water and prevent groundwater contamination.

I could sense Adlia’s frustration as he shared with me that very few of our landowners actually take advantage of these programs that make forest management so affordable and so profitable. It is surprising to him, and me as well, that so few of our landowners are even aware that most of these programs help the landowners by paying anywhere from one-half to three-fourths of the cost of doing what should be done anyway.

As we traveled the back roads of the county, Adlia would suddenly turn his massive four-wheel drive diesel truck, loaded full of fire fighting equipment and all other tools needed by a good forester, into a barely visible farm path. You could see the gleam in his eyes as he said, “Let me show you what we did for this landowner.”

He would then drive me slowly through acres and acres of beautiful pine trees. He was be quick to point out the areas left to hardwood trees that would provide nuts for the animals and where openings were allowed to grow up in native weeds and grasses to provide food and shelter for bobwhite quail, songbirds and small animals. We even flushed several coveys of bobwhite quail — something that just a few years ago would have been a rarity.

The common thread in all the sites we visited was a fire lane. Adlia would point them out to me, showing me how open paths divided large tracts of timber. These paths were put into place when the pines were planted, so the landowner could mow and disc to prevent fire from crossing.

In some cases where the lanes were not installed initially, such as older plantings or native stands, he showed me how a bulldozer had plowed a line through the forest creating the open path to prevent fire from crossing.

As we traveled along, all too frequently Adlia would shift from the excitement of success to the gloom of failure. He pointed out where tracts of timber had recently been harvested, and even with his encouragement, the landowner was not making any effort to replant the site.

He pointed out sites where the landowner had sold timber for far less than it was worth, simply because he or she did not know the value of the timber and did not know the importance of using a consulting forester to help with the timber sale.

He pointed out large tracts of timber that had been completely destroyed by wildfires, simply because the owner did not occasionally conduct managed burns on the property to prevent the buildup of leaves and limbs that fuel devastating fires.

As our travels were coming to an end, Adlia received a call on his mobile phone. It seems that all the good timber people in the county have his mobile number. This landowner had just found that lots of his longleaf pines were being damaged by some kind of worm.

With my approval, we changed our route and headed for the site. Adlia knew right where to go, because he knows all the longleaf pine sites in the county. When we arrived, the landowner showed us what turned out to be a large infestation of redheaded pine sawfly caterpillars. These caterpillars had totally stripped several dozen trees in one area and could be found on many other trees throughout the area. Adlia quickly helped the landowner make arrangements to handle the problem and began to make plans for inspecting other sites across the county for similar damage.

There are many landowners in the county who are good forest managers. But there are many others who are not managing their forests properly and are losing out on a lot of potential for additional income and increased profits.

It is easy to understand that an absentee landowner — one who does not live on the farm or farms he owns — may fail to realize the importance of the timber on his property, but there is little excuse for a landowner farmer to neglect this valuable resource.

If you are a landowner with timber on your farm that you have not been managing, please give Adlia a call at (910) 618-5540.

If you would like to be added to my forestry mailing list or have specific questions about forest management, please give me a call.

— Everett Davis is the director of the Robeson County Cooperative Extension Service.